Sunday, December 23, 2012

When people think of New York City’s famed Herald Square,
one name in particular comes immediately to mind – Macy’s, of course. Its 110-year
old flagship, billed almost from the start as “The World’s Largest Store”, has
been a revered local fixture and a worldwide tourist draw for generations.

Pictured here, in a photo dating from the 1974 Christmas
season, are Macy’s next door neighbors at the time – arch-competitor Gimbels, whose
rivalry with Macy’s was immortalized in comic fashion in the Christmas classic “Miracle
on 34th Street” and E.J. Korvette, which opened there in 1967 and
was known simply as “Korvettes” by the time this photo was taken.Prior to Korvette’s tenure, the corner of 34th Street
and Broadway was occupied by the Saks -34th Street department store.
Saks & Company itself was taken over by Gimbels in 1923, and just after
that opened their famous flagship store at 617 Fifth Avenue. The new Fifth Avenue
location “present(ed) to New York a specialty store on a scale never before
attempted in the selling of wearing apparel of the finer grade” (it was here the
“Saks Fifth Avenue” name originated), while the 34th street Saks store
would carry merchandise “along the (more modest) line which has characterized the Saks
business”, according to an April 23, 1923 New York Times article.
In 1965, when the decision was made to close the Saks 34th
Street store, E.J. Korvette, buoyed by the success of their own Fifth Avenue location, jumped at the chance to acquire the location. Korvette conceived it
as a combination flagship store/corporate headquarters, a gleaming showplace
with “eight selling floors, a selling basement, and a ninth floor for inventory
purposes”, the Times reported in late 1965. Plans for the seven story office
tower atop the store were already dropped by then, with zoning reasons cited,
but by that time Korvette had already run into some trouble. The renovated
building, as it appears here, opened on Halloween in 1967.

Operating under Gimbels’ ownership, the two buildings were actually
connected by a two-story bridge for over forty years, crossing 33rd
Street and connecting the second and third floors of each. Initially,
there was some thought given to maintaining the bridge after the turnover of
the Saks building to Korvette, but it ended up being torn down in April 1966. “We
saw no special purpose in continuing the bridge, a Korvette executive told a
Times reporter, while his counterpart at Gimbels said “My own feeling is that a
bridge connecting competitors just makes no sense”.

Korvette would be gone at the end of 1980 and Gimbels six
years after that, but on this date, decked out in Christmas garb, they
certainly looked nice side-by-side.

My sincere to thanks to Vincent Stoessel for the use of this
photo, taken by his father.

About this site

Pleasant Family Shopping is dedicated to preserving the history of retail chain stores of the past - with an emphasis on supermarkets and discount stores. Your comments and anecdotes or photo submissions are welcome. Many of the store photos presented here are of unidentified locations. Any help in identifying them would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for stopping in!